


Dark Harvest

by Drachenkinder



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 07:49:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16530422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drachenkinder/pseuds/Drachenkinder
Summary: The refugees from Asgard arrive on earth and everything goes to hell. Intro.





	Dark Harvest

The valley spread out below him in a barren expanse of blast scoured stone and ancient moraine. What in spring, would become a sizeable river was now a thin trickling stream. The glacier which was reclaiming the valley had locked up most of the water for the winter. Twenty years ago the valley was free of ice, the merest remnant clinging through summer in the highest mountain crevasse. Twenty years ago the planet was dying from greed induced heat and relentless industrialization. Twenty years ago the only civilizations on the planet were created by Homo sapiens. When the Aesir refugees arrived things began to change. It was amazing what a handful of dedicated people could do. 

Loki glanced to the south, where the towers of a human city challenged the pale blue of the winter sky. The inventiveness and ambition of humans was incredible, but their foresight had always been lacking. The Aesir were first treated as potential enemies, being so much more powerful than humans. Thor’s gentleness, his genuine goodness and concern for the peoples of both realms had won them a refuge here on Midgard. Aesir technology had secured their place and soon there were outposts of them in every major and several minor cities. Midgard was in the midst of mass extinctions and deadly climate change and the Aesir, it was believed, would save humanity from its own folly. They had. The climate was recovering, wildlife was repopulating and pollution was a mostly thing of the past. Too bad it hadn’t happened by intent.

Loki’s face twisted into a bitter smile as he thought of it. A plot worthy of his own invention, though he’d had no part in it. As in any encounter between unfamiliar cultures there were those who resented the newcomers. Doomsayers and fear mongers and human refuse who blamed others for their own lacking lives. Politicians who manipulated prejudice fro their own gains. They had banded together to form a group known as ‘Earth for Humanity’ in every place the Aesir lived. Not truly a threat, more of an annoyance with their rhetoric and pathetic assassination attempts. 

It was the sort of thing that should have died out on its own as the Aesir proved their worth to the world. Except that humans were not rational and so the group became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who should have known better, seemingly intelligent people, had been drawn into the movement. In secret labs they used their knowledge to craft a weapon to destroy the perceived threat of the Aesir. Aesir DNA was combined with the deadliest of human viruses in an effort to wipe out earth’s latest arrivals. But the plotters weren’t intelligent enough to realize that the combinations worked both ways. If the Aesir were extremely hard to kill, they were nothing compared to the ancient viruses they housed in their own flesh and blood. 

Because of the experiments of ‘Earth for Humanity’, diseases the Aesir had been immune to for millennium, that were unable to replicate in earth’s creatures, were given a gateway into humans. Every city that housed a chapter of the anti-alien group released their deadly plagues in a synchronized effort to kill the Aesir before they could strike back. Instead their own species fell like leaves before a winter storm. The diseases spread like wildfire. In days the cities were ghost towns, short lived wars broke out across the planet. Those not struck down by illness were killed by the insanity of battle, or starved in the food shortages as the infrastructure broke down. Overwhelming despair in the face of the horrendous losses had caused more deaths.

The Aesir retreated to their fortress. They suffered little more than the effects of a bad cold from the engineered plagues. However the military backlash against them was formidable enough, that it kept them bottled up for weeks and unable to provide help during the worst of the ravages. Even Thor was hard pressed to assist, there were simply too many that saw him as a target and an enemy rather than a savior. When it came down to a choice, Thor choose to protect his own people against the madness of the frightened humans. That decision and the deadly swiftness of the plagues had saved most of the Aesir. Using technology they had not shared with the humans, they were able to stop the worst horrors of war from being unleashed. There were however, places that were still uninhabitable from radiation, like the one Loki was presently checking.

Humanity was a sad remnant of the seven and half billion that had once thronged its cities and towns. Less than five million humans had survived worldwide. If not for the intervention of the Aesir those few would have also died. They now carried in their veins the blood of the alien race. Genetic splicing had been the only way to give them the immune system to combat the plagues. Loki smiled ruefully as he thought about how they would feel, if they knew that the Aesir scientists had done something similar for the other members of the great ape species. There wasn’t that much difference in them to most of the Aesir. In time, they had managed to eradicate the diseases. Without an available host and unable to mutate with its mixed DNA the virus’ had died out. 

But humans were forever changed. Their lifespan had doubled and they were immune to earth’s diseases due to the gene splicing, but they had also inherited another trait from the mix. Their birth rate had plummeted. Children were few and highly cherished. The great cities would never be repopulated. Towns and villages were the new social system. They’d also embraced Asgard’s simpler lifestyle, and there were many places where the Aesir were once again worshiped as gods. Loki wondered how much of that was intentional. The Aesir were not all as forgiving as Thor and it made sense to ensure that humans would not again grow to numbers large enough to be a threat.

Loki sighed and called down the flyer that he’d left hovering overhead. The readings showed the levels of radiation were dropping on schedule. The containment and treatment fields were slowly doing their job. Animals had been quick to move back into the damaged areas, but it would many years for them to be safely habitable for people. Loki missed the bustling cities, the fascinating spectrum of human culture and custom and behaviors. To see it all reduced to a poor copy of Asgard was heartbreaking. Thor mourned for the lives lost, but Loki mourned for their lost civilizations. He got into his flyer and headed to the next site, filing his report on the way.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this possible story line add comments and I'll write it.


End file.
